Changing Reality through Fiction: A Cognitive Approach to Late Ottoman Literature

Abstract

Can popular fiction influence social change? Many scholars of late Ottoman literature have suggested that early Ottoman novelists believed so and wrote fiction to influence the mindset of their audience. Some of these novelists are known to achieve intergenerational social influence through their works. However, some questions have not been asked: How does it work? How does reading fiction affect the reader’s mind? How can popular fiction change ideas and beliefs in society? Accordingly, how might popular novelists have influenced the mindset of the last Ottoman generation? This article proposes some preliminary answers to these questions by focusing on the most influential Ottoman intellectual and novelist of the late nineteenth century, Ahmed Midhat Efendi. Informed by recent research in cognitive sciences, it explores how Ahmed Midhat used fiction to simulate an ideal societal future and to reshape his readers’ mindsets as the first step toward it. This study argues that early Ottoman novelists’ intuitive belief in the power of fiction is now affirmed by cognitive sciences.